Pearl paint

Friends -
My once-beautiful '87 5000 QCST now has has a bad complexion. It seems
that the clear-coat is flaking off, first in small spots, and spreading to
large areas, especially on the trunk and other upper surfaces. I suspect a
high UV flux due to my living at a relatively high altitude (8000') is
doing it. Or ... this stuff is probably not rad-hard; maybe where I work?
:^) My main concern is, is there anything I can *do* about it, other than
sanding it all off to the metal? Also, my friend who sold it to me
(pretty-much a car expert - he actually likes them) told me that somewhere
is a painted surface that doesn't have the pearlescent coat so that you can
match the base coat (we discussed this because his horse gouged the paint
to the metal with her front teeth).
Too, are these Quattros (like some horses) known to be one-man cars? *I*
never have any problems with it, but when my wife (a German citizen) drives
it, the brake indicator comes on and she doesn't have any braking assist,
which causes concern, as she drives 100 miles one-way to school down from
the mountains to Albuquerque. I told her to disable the ABS next time it
happens to see if that makes any difference. I notice that the hydraulic
fluid is leaking somewhere as I've had to replenish it some (haven't had
time to investigate thoroughly yet), but the reservoir has not gone below
minimum level when she had the problem. I will be reading all the
"accumulator" threads to see if there's something there.
Thanks.
Brad Shurter - AOT Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM
87545 (505)665-1122, E-mail: rshurter@lanl.gov, 73023.533@compuserve.com
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